Welcome to ReefCentral.
Because of the sheer size of our forum, we've been forced to limit selling and trading to members who've met a couple of criteria. (If you're seeing this message, you haven't met them yet.) Please take a moment to acquaint yourself with our selling/trading rules to help make your stay a long and rewarding one.
Selling and trading on ReefCentral.

Does anyone have any microscope vids of copepods actually eating dinoflagellates? And do the copepods survive the meal? Or do they die like most inverts?

No microscope yet, but I have dinos mostly on my glass, and it is *covered* with pods. I'd say 90% of the pods I see are on the dinos. They're definitely not dying off. Pods are listed as a major predator of dinos in a couple of papers; I can dig up the links if you like.

I have the clear-white Amphiscolops flatworms. They are on the dino patches, but I'm not totally sure whether they're eating dinos, or the pods. They have a strange foldy behaviour that looks predatory. Their population is steady at a 'couple'.

It would be seriously amusing if one of the plagues of the reef world turns out to eat dinos!

I have a large refugium with stacks of sand for denitrification and a chaeto jungle for phosphate uptake and pods to thrive in.

I bought about 10,000 pods from reefs2go. I also got 200 glass shrimp and 50 peppermints. The plankton is the byproduct of their feverish mating and the phyto I add.

I have a few other tricks like a nighttime surge that moves the refugium only (since its on a reverse cycle). That flushes the babies up into the DT.

This population exists in spite of still running my UV at night. This is because the dinos remain in the water column and float from the DT to the refugium. The slow flow back up to the DT kills some of the plankton, but most will stay in the DT. The dinos will stay in the column and be exposed repeatedly to UV.

Interesting point.. I want to say I doubt it. Algae does put chemical messengers and signals in the water, this may be another reason green algae inhibits dinos.

@Billy I hear you on the rock. It's so frustrating when you are being careful and doing everything 'right' and something like this happens. Having a box of water in the living room that kills everything you put in it is not a relaxing experience.

About the hair algae, stick a rock in. It is unlikely to kill corals unless it's blocking out their light. Actually I doubt it will even grow in your tank unless you get your nitrates and phosphates up.

@bheron Wow, what an ordeal! I'm glad you're making headway finally. I think you are right about excessive cleanliness. I think it leads to low biodiversity, creating an environment where only extremophiles like cyano and dinos can survive. I hypothesize that the few of us with really intractable dinos (Hi DNA!) have something missing or wrong so far down the food chain it's difficult to remediate. Probably not a coincidence that neither of us has access to good real live rock or microfauna kits.

Thanks Quiet_Ivy. I spent years dealing with algae and cyano before the dinos. Was so programmed to keep reducing nutrients. It never worked! :-)

Quote:

Originally Posted by DNA

This is like a fresh wind in our sails.

:-)

So what about running Carbon? Any feedback that makes Dinos worse? After months of the 'dirty tank' method I'd like to run some carbon to see if I can clear up the water.